


Turn Green Again And Sing

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Backstory, Closure, Horror Elements, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-16 18:36:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11834631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: Reynir is desperate to make up for his lie and find a way to bring Tuuri home. Onni is furious and desperate. And the dream sea holds more dangers than just the spirits of trolls.





	Turn Green Again And Sing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [1010nabulation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/1010nabulation/gifts).



> Dear recip, your prompts were a joy and I've made so many gleeful noises at your letter that it's a little embarrassing to admit, so I hope you have as much fun reading this as I've had fun writing it. ♥

Grey waves beat listlessly on the ice crusting the harbour bar by the pickup spot, and Reynir found that they matched his mood. 

Mikkel's estimate for the walking trip had been correct - even with the… incidents that'd slowed them down they'd taken a week, and the constant alertness and _something_ lurking to get him had gnawed Reynir's mind half to pieces. He was tired, slept badly, and still jerked out of restless dreams; most often the troll that had doomed Tuuri burst out of her pyre and came for him, too. He did like Tuuri had done, going under the waves himself, before things warped in on themselves in the dream and Onni came, dragging both of them out of the water, crying. Sometimes Tuuri was gone by the time they reached the shore, and Onni managed to save only Reynir alone, and those times he couldn't shake the feeling of his fylgja watching. He woke wedged between Sigrun and Mikkel in their tent, finding it hard to breathe and doubting it was all a dream, and was glad that the darkness kept him from checking himself for the Rash. 

No wonder he was on edge. And, knowing his luck, something would come out of the water and snatch him at the last moment, now that they were all supposed to be safe. Reynir took a hasty step back from the edge of the pier and slumped down on a rusted bollard a little further from the water's edge. 

He was not unhappy, all things considered, to go home. A week of waiting until the ship arrived he could bear, and Sigrun - by way of Mikkel - had promised him that he could sleep as much as he liked. She was planning to do the same. Reynir hoped that Onni would be sleeping at the same time, at least sometimes. He'd tried to visit, but thought better of it - even if the time had been enough to miss him like a deep ache in Reynir's mind and heart. It'd only been a week since Tuuri's death. He'd need his space and quiet. 

A clang and a rumble behind Reynir told him that Mikkel had succeeded in crowbarring the bunker door open. Emil and Lalli grabbed their rifles, and Sigrun ushered them inside to check for trolls or any other unpleasant surprise that might await them down there, but they came back soon enough, and Sigrun slapped Emil's shoulder like she was trying to hammer him into the ground. She wasn't smiling, and her face rarely went without a deep frown, but it was the first sign of good cheer he'd seen from her in days, and it was heartening. 

They went inside. The air was dry and smelled old, but clear and without the stench that Reynir had come to associate with trolls, something damp and brittle and human that had raised his hackles both times he'd been close enough to smell it. Kisa, who'd been perched on top of the wheelbarrow, was calm, balancing on his shoulder as they made their way down a set of concrete stairs by the light of Sigrun's torch dancing ahead. Below, where the stairs opened into a spacious hall, its beam found an array that looked suspiciously like the things Reynir's siblings had told about from their ship adventure stories, a commando bridge or something like it. 

In the back of the room, a generator rumbled to life under Mikkel's hands. Reynir shielded his eyes against the sudden brightness as a glare of neon tubes pinged to life overhead, followed by lamps, dials and gadgets on the console. A dull hiss from the vents in the ceiling followed, and a stream of salty air filtered down. 

"Oh, good, we will not suffocate in our sleep," Mikkel remarked, deadpan. "I was considering the possibility. As that is settled, I will see to the food that we were promised. If you want to be helpful, try and see if the radio can reach headquarters, Reynir," Mikkel said, pressing a sheet with codes and frequencies into his hands, and then departing down an adjacent hallway. The rest of them dispersed after a few short orders from Sigrun, leaving him alone with the console. 

Reynir had had Tuuri explain the way the radio worked in the tank, and it wasn't long until he had established a connection. Staticky and distant as the voice sounded, Torbjörn was expressing cheer and congratulations. Reynir looked around, expecting Mikkel to materialize and take over, but he was probably still busy assessing their provisions or something similarly important. They had time now. Maybe it wouldn't matter if he claimed some for himself before Mikkel got back. 

"Ah… Torbjörn? I don't even know what I'm supposed to say, Mikkel handles that, but I'd… I'd like to talk to Onni if he wants to talk to me. I have to apologize for something I should not have said."

"About Tuuri?" asked Torbjörn. His voice rang hollow, and suddenly the empty feeling ballooned inside Reynir's ribcage, and everything was back. It had only been a week, after all. Lalli, who had slunk back in and found himself a corner of the console room, was watching him with sharp eyes. "Oh no," Torbjörn said, when Reynir's silence confirmed what he already must have known. "We were hoping - there is a small chance that exposure does not cause infection, I am sure you know how... " 

"She's dead," Reynir said, and tried to swallow down the tears. "The same night we lost the tank." 

"But -" Torbjörn said. 

"Mikkel - he… he's going to tell you. I can't. I need to talk to Onni. Please?" 

"Of course." There was a rustle and the noise of hushed voices, then, before he even spoke, the heavy silence that radiated off Onni even through the radio, like the quiet after a thunderclap. Reynir wondered if that was a mage thing, too, being able to tell just how devastated he was before he'd even spoken. 

"I don't want to talk to you ever again after this," Onni said, carefully, cutting, composed. "Do not come by my area. Do not contact me again, by radio or any other means. Go home. If I see you, I will - " he stopped himself before that final verdict. "Give me Lalli now." 

A stream of Finnish followed. Louder than before, and even without knowing the language, Reynir could hear the tears in it. He vacated his spot at the console when Lalli shot over to it and hissed at him. 

He could always help Mikkel take stock of the food and keep himself from breaking down that way, he guessed, but he already knew that that was not going to be enough to keep himself from finding Onni again. Not after they'd spent so much time together. Not after Onni had opened himself up enough to allow Reynir in. Not after Onni yielded to his coaxing, the fingertips on his cheek, the kisses, and not after Reynir woke aching and blessedly tired after one particular night. 

Not after this. He couldn't mean it. 

He didn't know about Onni, but it was too much for him to simply give up without trying. He'd done enough of that. 

So he wouldn't. He would not. 

* * *

Outside the bunker, evening came the second time since their arrival. 

The door looked straight into the sunset, but Reynir still jumped seeing the sliver of sky visible from his spot by the console running red and pink. At least that meant no more snow for the night and no shovelling in the morning, although it'd be icy, and for all his efforts Mikkel could not get the heating in the bunker to work. The body heat they all generated ought to warm up the bunks, but it bled out through the bare concrete walls into the ground, and with a mountain of blankets Reynir too often startled awake feeling he was suffocating, and again could sense his fylgja watching like a warning. 

Perhaps he'd find the courage to visit Onni instead, after giving him a night to change his mind. Reynir could not stay away, not when Onni was hurting and lonely and part of it was his fault, and he'd come up with a plan finally… or at least the beginnings of one. 

He had saved himself once by way of his rune, why he had not done it again when more than just his own stupid life depended on it, that of a friend and someone the team actually needed... he could make it right, he had to. But first he needed to speak to Onni, find out if there was a way. He knew that his own gods had allowed not just returns but resurrections, and if the Finnish ones were the same kind of merciful then perhaps.... Tuuri might get a second chance. 

Reynir wished now that he'd asked her while there had still been a chance, but stupid him had been too depressed to even think very much, much less of things to save her life. But then he'd been stupid enough to believe all might turn out well, hadn't he? Not just that; if the conversation between Torbjörn and Mikkel had been any indications, he'd been the only one. 

It hurt. 

He sighed and vacated his spot in the chair to go to bed, hoping that sleep would come for him soon.

* * *

Reynir cracked one eye open, finding the snow-covered valley and the waterfall, and the sheep nosing around for grass under the snow, with the lingering feeling that he was going to make it right. Patting his dog's head and ignoring the unhappy ears and tucked-in tail - it was just a reflection of the way he felt, and felt about Onni especially - and shaking his coat free of the dog's insistent pull, Reynir set off to the edge of his haven, past Lalli's abandoned one and across the dream sea. The dog trailed after him, whining anxiously.

Reynir listened as he walked, feeling around for Onni as he did so - and halted. Something was wrong, very, very wrong. 

A shrill shrieking in his head like a starved gull raised the hair on his arms, and it took him a moment to will his feet into moving. When they did, Reynir ran until he plunged through the misty barrier into Onni's Haven and miraculous quiet, cowering by a stone and trying to breathe. When he looked up, Reynir's heart seized at the desolation: The trees were shedding a carpet of wet needles that stank sweetly, and fungus climbed in slimy droves up the boles of the pines. Onni himself was nowhere to be seen among the wet mist, but Reynir could feel his sharp eyes on his back, much like he'd felt his dog before.

Onni wasn't as kind as that.

'' _Leave!_ '' Onni's voice boomed, making Reynir jump, reverberating from everywhere and nowhere; the ground, the water, the trees. 

''I need to talk about something! Please!'' Reynir yelled, full into the face of a rotten wind rising to drive him out of the Haven, but the force of it was relentless with Onni's magic, like fists physically shoving him. Reynir's feet scudded over stone and shallow water back toward the border of the Haven; he dug his fingernails into a tree but found the wood foul and spongy, flaking apart in his grip and leaving him with an ineffective fistful of soft splinters. 

"It's important! It's about Tuuri!" he tried again. If anything, the wind grew in response, like hands seizing him to for the final push. He probably imagined the fracture of a second that seemed like minuscule hesitation, as though Onni was at war with himself.

Then Reynir stumbled through the barrier of mist and back out into the dream sea with its stink of salt and rot. The wind subsided like a sigh, and something shifted in the border of Onni's Haven. When Reynir reached out he found it impenetrable, cold and hard and jagged like a wall of fractured glass. Onni must have worked something out to shut himself off, somehow. 

Then the tears came and Reynir drew his knees up to perch on a rock that broke the surface of the water, even as his dog was urgently tugging on him again. 

"I want to help. I know I can do it. I _must_ ," Reynir choked out. He had been counting on Onni, and he only realized how much now that he had, perhaps irrevocably, lost him. 

''I know, but it is not safe here for the moment,'' the dog said in a tone that brooked no objection, and Reynir wasn't sure what it came in answer to, his words or thoughts. 

"I cannot protect you from what lurks on these borders. Your lover is being hunted by something that will do anything to have him, and that means that it will take you, also. I do not know what it is. It is strange to our gods, and I think to the Finnish ones, too. You cannot rescue anybody if you yourself need rescuing. Come."

That made sense. Reluctantly, Reynir rose. He made up his mind to walk away and try and speak again to Onni when he felt less desolate and this threat was gone. Onni would deal with it, he was sure. Perhaps _that_ was the reason for the sudden shift in the barrier. Reynir ran a hand over it, and felt the construct shudder under his fingers the way Onni had shuddered under his touch, then it lay still. 

He turned to go, broke into a run. 

The fever-pitch whining started again, behind him. 

Reynir heard his dog growl. 

A hand - or what he thought was a hand - a cold, slimy, bony thing - clapped over his mouth and a spell whined into his ear. The surface of the water opened under him, and he fell, fell, fell, through dark water, past oily tendrils of trolls and grinning skulls that kept their distance as though they respected the prey of another, more powerful creature than them. 

The surface was far away now. Up above, he saw blasts of light, the paws of his dog flashing, the beginnings of a rune, faint and wavery in the water, dissipate and go out. 

Then darkness took him. 

* * *

Mikkel had a headache. 

"I am sorry. He is not in any type of shape to be speaking with you. Reynir has been asleep the past two days, and nothing I can do will rouse him. I have of course done all that is medically possible for me to keep him alive under the circumstances, but there is little else that I can do as long as I am not familiar with the ailment that plagues him. I have nothing else to report, except that scratches and bruises seem to manifest on him without any visible outside cause. I might be more inclined to ascribe it to magic after all I have seen than any mundane cause," Mikkel finished with a heavy breath into the radio. 

In response - or non-response - Onni said nothing. 

"Magic? That is ludicrous; I had expected better from a Dane," Torbjörn replied instead; Onni huffed out an offended breath. Torbjörn made an impatient noise to shush him. "Is there nothing you can do?" 

"Not at present. If he survives long enough for the ship to arrive, I will consult with their personnel for the cause, particularly if they have their own mage on board, but I can say this: It is not the Rash. For one thing, he would begin exhibiting symptoms before falling into a coma, and I have checked him thoroughly; there is nothing indicating that he was compromised either in the attack or afterwards, as we kept him strictly separate from Tuuri. And as much as I hate to say it, her suicide spared us a great deal of headache keeping Reynir safe on the foot-journey here. Let me repeat: It is not the Rash." 

"And the… cure?" Torbjörn asked. "Could he have taken it secretly, perhaps out of fear that he might have been infected after all?" 

"I checked through the vials. They are all still intact and present. Like I said; I am not aware of any condition that'd explain his current state. I would like to speak with Onni - I have heard Reynir allege that they are close, but I cannot make any guarantees." 

A crackle and a screech rang from the speakers when Torbjörn shifted the microphone. Onni's voice came out tight and hard. "I have nothing to say to you that might help you with Reynir." 

* * * 

The spell wore off, and Reynir drifted into the awareness of crushing pressure in his ears and chest, darkness lit by a strange blue light on the edges of things, a rock wall towering half above him like a makeshift shelter, and immobility. He'd thought, pleaded, prayed, that the last time he'd woken had been a terrible dream, but it felt as real as anything in the dreamworld did. 

Why wasn't he drowning? 

Terror immobilized him, but as if that were not enough, black water plants, hand-leafed, with air sacks and prickly like seaweed, gripped around his wrists and ankles, keeping him pinned against the dream-sea floor even when he kicked and tried to break his bonds. If anything, they tightened their hold when he struggled and fought to get loose, feeling like his lungs must burst. A bony hand would come down in the center of his chest and press him back down, digging through his coat and shirt and raking over his chest as if in wonder at finding living flesh before cupping a palmful of blood to renew the spell. Sometimes it came across his mouth, scratching his cheek. His instincts fought against biting down, filling his mouth with the texture of water-swollen flesh like that of a corpse. 

He gagged at the thought of it. The lapse in resistance allowed a gloating, spectral face into his view - no, not just one, several - a woman who looked so much like Tuuri that Reynir thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, a woman with Lalli's slick silver hair, and two men whose faces were a strange combination of Onni and Lalli, but both frozen in perpetual, empty grins that might have been handsome and endearing once. The only relief, and that was brief and cold and thin like water, was that Tuuri was not among them. 

As it was, the worst was the one that drifted into view on an icy current sometimes, the one with the thin, reedy voice of a shrieking gull and the bony hands that had taken him under, older than the rest… but even for that, she could have been Lalli, if Lalli were female and ancient, and the one who kept him under, whose spells subdued him no matter how much Reynir fought and tossed to stay awake. 

"You thought," she whined, "that my grandson was yours for the taking." Her face swam closer; her mouth opened impossibly wide, a dark cave to swallow him. "He told you to leave. He is _ours_ , and no heathen will have him. He will come and join us, over long or short. You will do just fine as bait for Onni, sweet Onni, cautious Onni." 

The rest of them - the Hotakainens, Reynir realized with a start, this was _their family_ and they were dead, or not dead, or… he couldn't say - weaved and bobbed like a single organism under the water in the hands of a puppeteer. 

None of them, apart from the old woman, ever spoke. 

This was the danger Onni had warned him about, time and again. And Reynir, although he'd listened, had - of course he had - gone and walked straight into their - its - trap. 

If Onni came for him now - if Onni _died_ down there - it'd be because of Reynir - and worse, for Reynir's sake. He choked around a sob. 

The woman laughed, and sang another spell. It pulled Reynir back under, into bleak despair and unconsciousness. He almost welcomed it over the horror of the realization. 

* * *

The pine reached its limbs around Onni like an embrace. He had fled from the Västerström's radio room after Mikkel's latest call and taken refuge outside in the small city garden behind the house. It held flowerbeds and bushes mostly, all dormant in winter, and a single pine tree. The scent of its sap and the thrum of life in it were blessedly familiar, and Onni had found relief there more often than not in the week since Tuuri had died. 

Now it was Reynir's turn. It might have seemed simple enough to explain his unconsciousness (if not the mysterious wounds) if he were Finnish - overexertion, grief, trauma, a lost _luonto_ , and patience to let him rest and return - but Reynir was Icelandic, and nothing that his friend had told him a long time ago when she'd found a book on Norse magic had hinted at something like this. Reynir himself knew too little, being a disappointingly blank slate. 

He couldn't think of whom to ask, and something told him that if he went in a protracted search for answers, any moment spent reading to find out about Reynir's condition would be a lost moment that brought him closer to the brink of no return. Onni briefly considered radioing back and speaking with the Norwegian Captain - with Mikkel to translate - because she at least knew about that type of magic, but he also suspected that if she knew anything, she'd not have held herself back. 

Onni pulled his hat deeper over his face and his coat closer around himself, and settled more comfortably against his tree, sinking himself down into the dreamworld, into his Haven, and into the shape of his owl. His wings beat silently as he went out in search and glided low above the surface of the water. 

He found nothing at all until he reached Reynir's Haven. That it still existed - and still lived, the land quiet and dormant much like the Västerström's winter garden in Mora, but life still pulsing underneath the surface even if it was struggling against something, and Reynir's dream sheep wandered in nervous clumps over the hillsides - was nothing short of a blessing. 

Onni closed his eyes, only a moment, and let the familiarity of Reynir wash over him, before alighting by a strange track in the snow. 

A dog's pawprints. 

The scuffle of fur. 

Spots of blood, standing out bright against the snow and leading to a tumble of boulders. In any other shape, Onni's ears might not have picked up the sound, but for someone who could hear the rustle of a mouse under snow, even the weak whining of Reynir's dog was loud. 

He found the _fylgja_ dragging itself to the edge of Reynir's Haven, panting and favouring a front paw. Spotting him, its tail beat against the ground just once, and the ears pricked up, a pink tongue came lolling between the front teeth in what was almost a dog's smile. A rune - a healing rune, perhaps? - circled outward from the dog, bright against the snow, when Onni approached, as if to say that all would be well. 

Onni changed back into his own form, dropping to his knees and sinking his fingers into the ruff of fur at the back of the dog's neck, finding the wetness of blood and the signs of a fight under his fingertips. 

"Tell me what happened," he said simply, choking on the words. Almost. 

_Not Reynir, too._

But he was still alive, Onni was certain, or the spirit would no longer be there. And to Onni's astonishment, the dog started talking. 

* * * 

"Your little messenger has done her job," the woman's voice whined into Reynir's hair. This time, fighting to shake the spells from him before they'd worn off, he was sure he'd been woken up on purpose for the creature to gloat. "Onni is coming, and soon he will join us." 

_JoINn Us, jOin uS…_ whispered the other Hotakainens, weaving around and through each other like spectres, floating on their invisible puppeteer lines, and smiling. Perhaps Reynir was wrong. Perhaps some remnant of their minds had survived whatever had become of them, perhaps the gleeful anticipation had broken through whatever kept their humanity caged. 

"Help," he croaked. Water filled his mouth, icy and tasting like salt and iron. "Please help me. Let me go." The Hotakainens bobbed and weaved and floated away. Reynir's lungs burned, his wounds ached and bled in thin red tendrils into the water. 

As much as he strained his eyes, he could not spot the surface of the dream sea, or even a lightening of the waters bearing down on him. 

No one tried to put him under a spell again. 

He did not know where the old woman - Tuuri's, Onni's and Lalli's grandmother, Ensi, it had to be her - was occupied preparing for Onni; he could not see her. But he tried to move, cautiously trying to bend one knee and then the other. They ached and were stiff from disuse, and for a horrifying second Reynir was convinced he had been trapped down there forever, frozen. There was no way to tell how much time had passed. Perhaps he was already dead. 

But eventually his legs bent. The seaweed that clutched him tightened its grasp in response, but not as much as he feared, and there were sharp rocks all along the sea floor, and if he was careful and patient… perhaps he could get free. Perhaps. 

Onni would need his help. At the very least he could run, find the surface, and get away. 

* * *

The dog led Onni to the spot where Reynir had gone under, unerring. 

Onni balanced uneasily in the firm footsteps that let him walk on the water - gods, how wasn't Reynir getting sick every time he went straying? - still clutching the fur of the dog's neck to keep himself upright and not plunge into the water. That moment, he wasn't sure if the ability to transfer a firm foothold by touch was a blessing or a curse. 

He took a breath. His _kantele_ was tucked behind Onni's belt. He'd left his fur cloak in Reynir's Haven to not burden himself with unnecessary weight, and his _puukko_ knife lay in the palm of his hand. He'd recalled all the runos that he could think of to fight, especially the ones that he had learned in Keuruu, and had the beginnings of a new verse on his lips.

He knew exactly what awaited him. It had come for him once before. 

He'd barely escaped alive then, soon after coming to Keuruu, and only with the help of other mages in Keuruu who had felt the commotion stirring the dreamspace into a frenzy. But he'd been younger then, and his magic weakened by grief and fear. This time he knew what awaited. 

Now it had Reynir. 

In a perverse way he was _glad_ , because kneeling next to the dog, a sharp realization had flashed into him. _I cannot leave him there. I love him._. As if there had been any doubt before. As if his rescues before hadn't been clear as day if he only had bothered to listen to himself, to _why_ he was so attuned to Reynir of all people when his objective had been to protect Tuuri and Lalli most of all. Ask himself why he let Reynir in time and again, in joy and devastation, and never bothered to try and keep him out before. Why he'd let Reynir in even further, let him lay Onni bare, mouth to mouth and sweat-slick skin sliding together, an open handful of red hair as Onni moved in him. 

That, he knew, did not have to mean a thing. It never had, the few times he had let that happen. 

This time it did. 

Onni bit down hard on his lip, and looked down into the water. Far, far below, he could see glimmers of blue magic. A drop of blood fell at his feet, spreading and dissipating in the dark water. He could almost see his grandmother's head shoot up under the surface, her nostrils widening as she caught the scent of family. 

"I am ready," he said to the dog. The dog beat its tail once. "I cannot be alone." 

It was going to be one way - with Reynir - or another - with his family. 

He plunged into the water headfirst, and sank like a stone. 

* * *

A streak of blue lightning burned shrill afterimages into Reynir's tightly-closed eyes. The water shuddered with the force of more blasts, like a thunderstorm that had plummeted into the depth of the dream sea. 

_Onni._

Reynir could not keep his eyes closed, even through the flashes and patterns. In the burning light, bright blue and throwing light onto the sea floor for perhaps the first time, Onni's fists were glowing, his eyes were pools of electric fire. 

Creatures that shunned the light fled through the water in a mad dash for darkness; but Onni's grandmother rose to meet him, white hair streaming behind her, bony arms outstretched and smiling her terrible corpse smile. At the edge of Reynir's sight, Reynir could see the other Hotakainens waiting. 

Onni darted away. Another bolt of lightning sheared through the water, splintering the rock where it hit. 

The chase seemed to go on forever. Reynir watched, transfixed. 

For all his bulk, Onni was an excellent swimmer, quick and agile and hard to grasp for his grandmother's skeleton hands. Once she had him, but Onni's knife flashed in a blue arc; his grandmother reeled back, and her whining rose into a spell that Onni counter-sang. 

Their magics clashed together bright blue on lurid corpse-light, and both were thrown back by the ripples, Onni's grandmother swept far into open water. Onni slammed into the rock wall, his mouth opened into a rush of bubbles, precious air escaping to the surface, and he fell, coming to rest on the sea floor near Reynir, out of his reach. 

Half-lidded, his eyes showed only white. 

"No," said Reynir. "No!" His helplessness vanished - perhaps the spell had lifted or dissipated in the fight, perhaps Ensi had become distracted or some of Onni's magic had broken it, and he began struggling. Onni's knife lay by his hand, close enough for his fingers to close around the hilt before the sea-weed tightened on his skin, trying to force him down. Part of Ensi's control was still there, then, but the blade still glowed blue with Onni's lingering magic, and Reynir slashed desperately at his bonds, cutting into his wrists, fingers, palms in his haste to get loose. 

In a cloud of his blood, finally his bonds let go. 

A shriek rippled through the water. Reynir grabbed Onni under both arms and kicked off from the bottom of the sea, up and up and up, acutely aware of the way he was slipping, the shadow of Ensi following, the spectres of the other Hotakainens. 

Reynir's head broke the surface into the sight of watery stars and open sky. 

Air. 

He trod water for a moment and pushed Onni's head upward, forced his mouth open to help him breathe, pressed his own mouth down when Onni did not. 

Something seized Onni, and pulled. 

Onni's eyes snapped open. He retched, fought for air, went under, leaving Reynir alone. 

Then, a breathless moment, all nothingness, breath, and tears. 

And the water exploded blue in feathers, owl wings, and Onni rose. 

A flock of birds followed after him, five of them, and winged into the sky, away until they were no larger than stars, and winked out.

* * * 

A shoot of young pine needles uncurled like a fist to sway in a soft breeze under sunlight. 

Reynir had been watching the tree for a while. Onni still slept curled against him, part of Reynir's discarded cloak covering his middle, but that did not mean that his Haven was unresponsive to his moods and feelings. Out of impulse Reynir bent his head and kissed Onni's hair, bright in the sun-glitter reflecting from the water. 

Onni's skin twitched under his lips, his nose curled - Onni was ticklish and sensitive, Reynir had discovered to his delight, enough that a touch of fingertips on the right spot between his ribs could send him squirming, and with more than just laughter, too. That'd been the past few days… or nights, rather. First, frantic reassurance that they were both alive, then equally frantic confirmation that they were well. Reynir was glad the dreamworld didn't hold the same obstacles to endurance that the real world did, or he would have found it trying to keep up with all the needs he indulged, Onni's and his own. 

He sighed, and smiled, a little. 

The events of his captivity still weighed heavily if he let them, but Onni was with him, Onni was fine, and Onni had won. He'd had the upper hand for most of the fight with his grandmother. Being alive, he'd said, had given him the advantage, not being a dead spirit clinging to a decaying body and dividing its attention keeping the spirits of her family bound to her and obedient when every instinct called them to Tuonela. He'd prevailed where she could not let go, still believing until the last that magic might save her family, that Onni, being non-immune, would over short or long join them, and that keeping them together for an eventual cure or some aid was more important than letting them rest. 

It'd been Tuuri's passing and escape, he thought, that had stirred them into action, and Reynir's feelings, tangled around the same thing and holding Onni's heart, had done the rest to drive Ensi to attack.

There was a reason, Onni had said, that it was no longer attempted to redeem spirits that the Rash had already warped and destroyed as it had his family, but he had guided them into the afterlife and the Swan of Tuonela had had places for them already prepared. It was not the way of the Finns to cling to life once it was over, but Ensi had never allowed for error, failure, or defeat until the last. Tuuri was the only one of them who'd escaped, making an early end - painful, but ultimately enough to save herself and her humanity. 

Reynir had held him through the tears after Onni had spoken his piece, while Onni had held himself stiff and tense in Reynir's arms. He'd taken hours to relax enough to rest his head on Reynir's chest, but he fell asleep quickly listening to Reynir's heartbeat. 

And then… things had changed. The shadow of his past that Onni had always dragged with him had flaked away like an old beetle shell, little by little. Onni's Haven had begun to recover. The air and water cleared. The fungus that had choked the trees withdrew… and now, first signs of new growth. 

Reynir gently disentangled himself from his sleeping lover and padded to the water to wash off the traces of the night, fighting down a momentary surge of fear as he looked at the rippling surface. 

Nothing lurked under there. Not in Onni's Haven, and the dream sea at least held one less danger now, and the knowledge that in addition to walking on water, it was another of Reynir's talents not to drown going under it. He would have to find out if Icelandic mages could all do this, or if it made him somehow unique, but there was no rush. 

And for the moment at least, they were close enough together that Reynir could leap from one Haven to the other. The rescue ship had come and was docked at Øresund Base, where Onni had embarked with the rest of the organizers, all of them together bound for Iceland to celebrate the unexpected success that the mission had become in the end: By the Swan's gratitude, Onni had been allowed one wish, and he had not returned alone out of Tuonela. 

Reynir dipped his hands into the water just as Onni's barefoot steps came to join him and arms wound around him from behind. "Are you leaving already?" Onni asked, kissing his neck. 

Reynir chuckled and turned to face him, briefly resting his head against Onni's warm stomach. "I'll see you at breakfast with the others," he said. "And no one is going to stop us from having a nap later, unless Tuuri wants to catch up on more that she missed." 

Onni smiled briefly. "Breakfast, then. Although I like this better." 

Reynir leaned into his hold and tilted his chin up to kiss Onni, lingering against his lips. "I'm not awake yet, you know. Maybe there's enough time to still be useful?" 

Onni's eyes lit up. "Oh, _yes_."

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to K. and A. for their help! The title is from _Beneath the Stars_ by Olav H. Hauge, translated by Robin Fulton.


End file.
